


Only from the heart can you touch the sky

by Isis



Category: Eternal Sky Trilogy - Elizabeth Bear
Genre: Fictional Religion & Theology, Gen, Post-Canon, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 02:17:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2796056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After many years under foreign skies, Ümmühan returns to Asitaneh and the stronghold of the Hasitani.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only from the heart can you touch the sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Artifactrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artifactrix/gifts).



Many years had passed since Ümmühan had last been in Asitaneh. The ash and blackened stone of the city's burning had long since faded, replaced by new structures with clean facades. Uthman Caliph Fourteenth-and-Fifteenth had rebuilt his city in the manner it had been before, so the casual eye might be fooled into believing that it had always stood in that way, that it had never burned. That Uthman Caliph Fourteenth still ruled as he always had, an unbroken reign, with the pretender Kara Mehmed banished to the mists of invisible memories.

Ümmühan's eye was anything but casual. But of course; she was a historian. 

The eunuchs bearing her litter brought her through the city to the gates of the stronghold of the Hasitani. This fortress, too, looked much like it had in the days before the city had burned, though of course the building itself had not been touched by the flames. Any changes here, she thought, would be inside, among the women who served the Scholar-God.

"You are welcome, Poetess," said the porter. It was a different man – or rather, a different eunuch – than had guarded the gates on her last visit, so long before. The old porter had not been young. Clearly the new porter had been told to expect her, which only made sense, as she had been invited by the abbess – summoned, really, but it had been a welcome summons. 

The last time she had come to Asitaneh she had been a slave, and she'd had to cajole Mehmed into giving his permission for the journey; she had arranged things so that he thought it was his idea, of course, but it had been a tricky business. After the battle of Dragon Lake, she had thrown herself on the mercy of the Wizard Samarkar and begged her freedom. And so when the abbess had written to her, asking if she might visit, there was nobody to say she could not come. 

A very young Hasitana, who was sitting by a table in the antechamber to the abbess's office, sprang up at her arrival. "Poetess, you are here! May I bring you tea?"

"No, thank you, I am well," Ümmühan said. The girl had to be younger than Ganjin, the child-Khagan who was only now beginning to assume his power and authority over his Qersnyk people. She had unusually pale hair and skin, giving her a faintly exotic air, and her words held the touch of an accent. She or her parents must have come from somewhere far north of the Caliphate – Kyiv, perhaps. "Do not let me keep you from your tasks."

"My only task at the moment is to see to your comfort." The girl hesitated. "Though if you would help me translate a few verses into Istric, it would be a great service."

"I am afraid I speak no Istric."

"It is my native tongue." Even farther away than Kyiv, then, was her homeland. "But our words are different enough from Uthman I thought it would be best if you could advise me on the precise meaning you had intended." 

She pulled a few thin pieces of paper from her pocket and unfolded them onto the table, smoothing out the creases, and with a jolt of surprised pleasure Ümmühan recognized the verses. "But this is my poem of the Qersnyk Sacred Herd! Do they care about such things, in Istria?"

"The history of the world is for all people, no matter their sky," said the girl solemnly. 

Great wisdom from such a young mouth, thought Ümmühan, taking the topmost paper and holding it up to the light. "Of course you are right. Where shall we begin?"

* * *

It was almost a surprise when the abbess's office door swung open, and Ümmühan had to put aside the work; she'd been so absorbed that she'd nearly forgotten the summons that had brought her here. From what the girl had told her, while few Istrians followed the Scholar-God, they also had among their gods one who revered learning and knowledge. There were many in Istria, the young Hasitana told her, who yearned for word of events that had taken place under other skies. 

"I am pleased to see you looking so well, daughter," said the abbess, taking her hands as she greeted her. 

Ümmühan did not say, "And you," for that would have been an unwanted and unneeded lie. The abbess had grown older; well, they had all grown older, had they not, in the past years? The graying braids had turned nearly as white as the veil she wore, and her dark face had become lined like a wrinkled plum, but that was natural as well, in an aging woman. Ümmühan herself now had white streaks beginning to show in her own hair, and fine lines around her eyes. 

But clearly it was not beauty, or the lack of it, that troubled the abbess. Her once-straight back was bent, and she walked with the aid of a stout staff made of wood almost as dark as her own skin. She asked the Istrian to bring them tea and then moved back to her chair, settling into it with obvious relief.

"The years mark us all," said the abbess, noting Ümmühan's glance at her staff. "I am pleased with how I have spent mine. And you, daughter? Was your sojourn in the East what you expected it to be?"

"Not at all what I had expected," admitted Ümmühan. When she'd asked the Wizard Samarkar if she might stay among the Qersnyk court, she had known the road ahead of her would be difficult. The comforts of the Uthman Caliphate would not be hers on the steppe, and her skill at writing Uthman verses would not win her praise among those who spoke only the Qersnyk tongue. Despite her oath to Samarkar-la, she knew she'd likely be mistrusted by many, thought the Caliph's agent in the East, set as a spy among them. 

But the comforts of her gilded cage were not ones she missed. And though there was, indeed, mistrust at first, it had turned to a wary acceptance, and eventually to true friendship.

"It is strange," she said, "how a foreign sky can seem like home when you have a friend at your side. Ato Tesefahun –" 

She broke off, and swallowed hard. He had been an old man at the battle of Dragon Lake, older than the abbess was now. His death had struck her very hard, and she was not yet over that loss.

"The great architect of Asitaneh," said the abbess, nodding. "And the great-grandfather of the new Khagan."

"The Wizard Samarkar placed me into his care, you see. At first, I thought it was so that he would prevent me from writing anything subversive against the Khaganate. Then, I thought that perhaps she expected I felt lost, a concubine with no Caliph, a veiled woman with no man to tell her what to do."

They shared a laugh at that. "But that was not it either, was it, my dear?"

"No," said Ümmühan. "She expected I felt lost among people who spoke a different tongue and who worshipped different gods. And she was right."

Ato Tesefahun had been a link to her culture, and he had become a friend. Samarkar-la had understood what it was like for her. She had been a Rasani princess, married off to a Song prince, and those three years in Song had been exile to her. Becoming a wizard had been a different sort of exile from her previous life, and joining with Re Temur had been not a running from, but a running to; a change she sought, rather than a change she had been forced to make.

Ümmühan had been running from her old life as a slave. Samarkar-la had helped her to transform this decision, had helped her see what she could be running to. She, too, had become a friend.

The Istrian girl brought them their tea, and Ümmühan breathed in the soft scent of mint. She had become accustomed to the bitter tea with mare's milk that the steppe people drank, but this scent was Asitaneh to her, and it, more than anything else, grounded her in the place where she now was. And yet there were changes, too. 

"A Hasitana from Istria?" she said, after the girl had returned to the antechamber.

"Her mother was an Istrian widow who married an Uthman soldier and returned with him to his home. When the child discovered that her mother's husband intended to have her to wife as well, she came to us." 

"And she does she serve the Scholar-God? Or some god of Istria?"

The abbess looked at her over the rim of her teacup. "Does it matter?"

Once it would have. Samarkar-la had called her a missionary, and indeed she still thought of herself as such. Every story she told, every poem she wrote, all was to show the glory of God in the deeds of men. But in the years since she had left Asitaneh for the first time, she had traveled through many lands. She had watched Re Temur's men win victory under the hard violet sky of Song, and traveled with Samarkar-la to see the Citadel and its wizards under the Rasani sky. She had seen the reddish moon of Saadet Khatun's child and the dark-banded silver moon of the young Khagan rise side-by-side over the vast steppes. Now she was again under the pale turquoise sky of the Uthman Caliphate and the Scholar-God.

She shook her head. "Each land has its own sky. Why not, then, its own god?"

The abbess smiled. "Why not, indeed. Yet as a conquering ruler may change the sky to his own, so we may bring the word of the Prophet Ysmat to new lands and new peoples."

Ümmühan bowed her head. "I have not wavered in my own belief."

"You have not disappointed me, daughter," said the abbess. "Rather, I am proud. You will lead the Sisterhood well, as my successor."

It was a good thing she'd nearly finished her tea, or she would have spilled it all over herself. Instead she placed her cup carefully on the table.

"You honor me," she said simply. "But surely there is someone here who would be better suited? A sister who has spent her life here in our temple would know better how to administer the work of our order."

"A sister who has spent her life here would have only the knowledge gained from study and looking within. To take the Hasitani forward, the leader of our order must have knowledge of the world outside our walls. Knowledge of other lands and other skies." The abbess placed her hand on Ümmühan's arm. "Come. Let us walk."

Leaning on her stick and on Ümmühan's elbow, the abbess led her out into the stronghold. There were work rooms and study rooms, temples and quiet places for worship; and above all there were libraries, the vast storehouses of knowledge that was the work of the priestesses of the Women's Rite. Everywhere she looked she saw the sisters of her order – young maidens, old crones, women at every age in between. Women darker than the abbess, from Messaline or Aezin, and women as pale as the Istrian sister. Every head bent over learning, over the work that would glorify the Scholar-God and fill a dozen, a hundred, a thousand empty scrolls with history and poetry and mathematics and life.

Contentment, mixed with not a little pride, bubbled up from somewhere deep in her heart. She could not keep it from showing on her face as a smile. 

"I have heard that Uthman Caliph had a message from one that he held dear, sent by a Wizard of Tsarepheth," said the abbess. 

"You heard that, did you?"

"The temples of the Hasitani are under his protection now. We and our work are revered."

"And so we go where we will, and do as we like, with no concern about the desires or whims of men." A tinge of bitterness crept into her voice.

"Not yet," admitted the abbess. "But maybe in your lifetime. Maybe under your leadership."

Ümmühan looked out across the library where they had paused. This was the place where she had carefully written the name of the djinn; this was the place where she had had the joy of reading the Lay of Istajama from the sacred book of the Prophet Ysmat. She suspected the abbess had led them here deliberately. No matter. She had made her decision.

Back on the steppe, the young Khagan sat the Padparadscha Seat. The Wizard Samarkar had returned to the Citadel of Tsarepheth. Ato Tesefahun had passed from the world. She had nowhere else to go.

She had nowhere else she wanted to go, she realized; she had come home. And there was so much to be done here, so many things that she wanted to do. It was an opportunity, and a gift.

"You honor me," she said again. "And I will do my best."

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to victoria_p for beta reading, and for the inspired suggestion to look to Rumi for a title.


End file.
